Shires was recommended for the gig by her high school band director. She wound up making history, the paper notes, for her “brief but emblematic role as a white musician backing up black performers in a fully integrated recording studio in 1963 Alabama.”

“The first thing I did was the opening,” she told The Chapel Hill News. “I improvised – which I do now – but back then I just didn’t. I guess I was just in the spirit of it and just having a good time. I don’t remember a lot of takes.”